It's 2028. The sky is greyer than today's. Drugs are legal. 16-year-olds can vote and are free from their parents' rules in almost every country in the world. Stores have automated employees, and many people complain that that takes away jobs from humans. Jurors who convict innocent people are sentenced to life-o-suction operations that take years off their lives and add them to the life of the person they convicted. Bands have names like Sulfur Pie, and All at Once, not the Backstreet Boys nor One Direction, are the hot boy band. And the Republican Rutherford LeGrand is the unpopular president of the United States, running for reëlection this year.

One teen boy, 16-year-old Stephan Genkins Bruise, lives a mundane life with his friends in the California town of Los Caballos in 2028. Then, one day, he catches a prion-caused disease called Diamond-Zuckerman disease (DZD) that makes him forget basic things, gives him nosebleeds, and often renders him unable to stand up straight. The news is bad, as DZD has eventually killed everyone who's had it before.

But there is hope for Steve. One laboratory is developing a method of inner-body travel that will allow a team of "somatonauts" to travel inside Steve's body and destroy the DZD prions.

Many participants in Inner Bruise have added characters such as the four men who are in an identity theft ring, stealing "AALL cards"; Jocasta Lin, a Christian girl who does backflips and likes grinding; Jeff King, a young inventor who gave us the telepaper and floorboard-covered water jets; the observant and romantic Rochelle Conti; the beer-drinking Sulfur Pie fan Adrian Kerekes; the gum-chewing California blonde Sandy Olson who often talks about her cat; the union leader Miguel Ortiz; and a teen-age rock star with a glass eye who changed his name to Jim Musiclover.

For a sample, here is Chapter 1 of Inner Bruise:

Stephan Bruise picked up his cellphone to read the listing of answering machine messages that had accumulated for him. Home again. He looked hard at the liquid crystal display on the front. April 14, 2028. All it had was today’s date and a little notation in black for answering machine messages. He would have to press just the right button before it started scrolling through all the recorded messages from the other kids.

Start! Ring!

"Hi, Stephan."

"Hi Steve."

"Hi, Steve."

"Hey, Stephan."

"Hey, STEVE!"

"Hey, Steve."

"Hi, Steve."

"Ya, Steve. Want to come to a party with me tomorrow night? Yeah, call back."

"Hi, Steve." In a very giggly, girly voice.

"Hey, Steve-O! How’ve things been going? Be sure to call back and tell me."

"Hello, Stephan."

"Hi Steve boy!"

A tone signaled the end of the string of message intros. He sat there smiling into space as he thought of all the friends he would have to get back to and the appointments he would schedule that day.

He walked over to the magenta coffee maker on the table and started to prepare himself some mocha. He remembered that the first person on his short list that he had to call back that day was Ramón Alvarado. Multitasking, he thought as he ground the coffee about the first few people he was going to call. Brown coffee powder spilt over his left shoe while he was trying to organize in his head.

He mumbled a few barely audible curses and shook his shoe gingerly, the powder falling off and resting on the floor. What sort of fool was he for thinking that he could organize and make something to drink at the same time? He’d never been able to do it before . . . and this was the end result of it every morning. The same scenario playing out and repeating. Mundane. He’d like for his life to be less hectic and contain a bit more adventure. It was always calls . . . appointments . . . more appointments . . . the occasional free time with friends. Surely there had to be something. Something more to his life than this. He gave up on the mocha and decided to go out. He had time to grab something to drink before it was absolutely necessary to return those missed calls. And to be honest . . . he could use a bite to eat. It had been quite a few hours since his last meal.

Shaking his shoe one last time, he grabbed his cellphone and shoved it into the pocket of his brown suede jacket before pulling it on. He grabbed the pad of yellow paper by the door and wrote on it, “TO ZETTOLO’S – WILL BE BACK”. Taking one last glance about the room, he walked out and pulled the door shut. He’d be back in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most. He smiled and put an extra spring in his step. A mocha latte and two crème-filled doughnuts sounded more than exceptionally nice right now.

It's been over a year and no one from this site has joined this project.

So I'd like to ask all of you why. Is there some reason you haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki? I can't figure out what it is.

It's been over a year and no one from this site has joined this project.

So I'd like to ask all of you why. Is there some reason you haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki? I can't figure out what it is.

As I believe I've said before, this sounds like an interesting premise, and I wish you and your fellow collaborators the best of luck writing this story. I'm personally just not interested in joining the project. It's just not for me.

In this post, I'm going to try to be as honest as possible, even if I think I sound a little rude, because you deserve an honest response. I promise that it's nothing personal and that no offense is meant. Like I said above, I have nothing against you, the project itself, or any of your fellow collaborators.

Of course, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, so here's why I, myself, am personally not interested in joining this project, in no particular order:

I'm not a huge fan of the title. I'm going to get this one out of the way first because it's incredibly minor and trivial. However, there's just something about the sound of "bruise", especially as a person's name, that rubs me the wrong way.

Generally speaking, I don't like to collaborate on creative endeavors. There will be exceptions to this, of course. I participate in a lot of collablang threads, but all I have to do in those is vote, most of the time. I'm very interested in potentially playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which have been described as "collaborative storytelling", but those stories don't get published. I'd be open to collaborating on a deeper level, for lack of a better term, similar to how this story is being written, but only with one or two people I was already close with beforehand. I'm not comfortable collaborating with a group of strangers on this level.

As a bit of a continuation of the last point, this project was started in 2003, about 12-13 years before this thread was started, and 14-15 years before now (if my math is correct). That's super intimidating. I know the Wiki says something about "being welcoming to newcomers", but that doesn't change the fact that, if I were to join this project, there would be more than a decade's worth of material already there, that I never got a say in. Additionally, you've made it sound like the project doesn't get a lot of new members, meaning that most of the people currently working on it have been doing so for a while, and joining such an established community 14-15 years in is, again, super intimidating to me.

I'm a writer myself. I'm also a conlanger. I have a bunch of projects of my own that I barely have time to work on. Joining collaborative projects like this would just give me even less time to work on my own original stuff. Like I said, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I have a feeling I'm not alone on this point, at least.

It's just not my style. I'll reiterate that the premise sounds cool, and that I don't mean to offend or discourage your or any of the other participants, but, based on the excerpts and summaries I've seen here and on the Wiki, my writing style wouldn't fit in with this project. I realize I'm almost literally judging a book by its cover, and I know this isn't a very concrete statement, but it just doesn't seem like the kind of story I'd write.

Possibly connected to the last point, something specific that I was actually put off by was the political background for the story. The coup against Trump and the things that follow just sound so unrealistic. I understand that this is science fiction, and some things are going to be "unrealistic", but this is just… silly, for lack of a better term. On top of that, it feels like it vilifies anyone who doesn't support Trump. On top of everything about Zuniga and the Revolution Party being unbelievable worldbuilding that would take me out of the story immediately, the subtext doesn't sit well with me at all. I'm not saying the story shouldn't criticize liberalism and left-wing ideologies if members of the project feel some of those viewpoints need to be criticized, but this feels far too biased towards the right to me, whether that was intentional or not. Was this part there since 2003 (not the Trump part specifically, of course, but the whole "damn liberal children ruining democracy, legalizing drugs, etc., etc." part)? Obviously the story isn't portraying the Republican, LeGrand, as perfect either, but the parts of the background about him sound far more realistic. For example, "we oppose communism and same-sex couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt" are real, mainstream conservative viewpoints in the United States right now, while "let's kill thousands of cops" is a ridiculous caricature of liberalism that almost couldn't be further from the reality of what even the most extreme people believe. Also, the fact that this liberal president essentially makes a law based on "waaah, our parents are too mean", again, just feels so silly and rather biased.

Another specific aspect of the story that I was put off by was all the romance. This is just a personal issue I have with a lot of fiction, especially fiction centered around teenagers. The whole "X is dating Y, but X and Z used to be together" feels like very forced drama and is usually unnecessary to the general plot. I get that it's background information about the characters and their relationships, but there's something about it that's just very off-putting to me. Again, this is a problem I have with a lot of stories, not just this project.

Those are all the reasons I can think of for why I "haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki". Once again, it's nothing personal, and no offense meant. I just wanted to be as honest as possible. I apologize for the bluntness.

If I might ask, what kind of response did you expect? I don't think anyone's trying to say "this project is bad and everyone involved has been wasting their time" by not jumping onboard. I think it's really admirable that this community has stuck with this project for so long, and again, I wish you the best of luck. I'm just personally not interested in joining.

It's been over a year and no one from this site has joined this project.

So I'd like to ask all of you why. Is there some reason you haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki? I can't figure out what it is.

It looks like some typical sci-fi thing that I can find on other gaming sites that I regularly browse/stalk, but/hence there are many other choices elsewhere.

But that's just me though, I'm quite sure that you want feedback from the other conlangers/conworlders here

It's been over a year and no one from this site has joined this project.

So I'd like to ask all of you why. Is there some reason you haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki? I can't figure out what it is.

* I'll echo shimo on one point at least: Right now I've got six or eight writing projects that I've been very successfully procrastinating the last few years. I'd have very little time or effort to procrastinate on another!
* Also, teen-fantasy SF really isn't my thing. The whole society revolves around "liberated" teens, free from the control of their monstrous & evil parents thing, yeah, that's pretty silly and unrealistic. Admittedly, I would have eaten that up when I was 16! For about twenty minutes, because, well, it doesn't really take a genius to figure out what control-free 16 year old children will do with themselves.
* Political fantasy (based on shimo's reading of the matter) is also not my thing.
* The disjoint between these dystopic elements and the core coolness of the actual story make it seem entirely too silly and unwieldy to me.
* If the story were focused on innerbody travel as cutting edge healing science, even with some kind of vague & sinister politics going on in the background to cause tension, then I'd be more likely to read. (And if it were my area of interest, more likely to participate.) The focus vis-a-vis the premise seems to be lacking, though.

* Taking away the drawbacks, I think the actual premise - - - innerbody travel - - - is a pretty cool area to write about. I wrote a speculative fiction story about innerbody travel several years ago, though in the mind-psychological realm rather than the physical. All the same, good luck with it!

If we stuff the whole chicken back into the egg, will all our problems go away? --- Wandalf of Angera

It's been over a year and no one from this site has joined this project.

So I'd like to ask all of you why. Is there some reason you haven't been interested in, or have actively been turned off from, participating in the Inner Bruise collaboration wiki? I can't figure out what it is.

I'd have thought a budding author would have enough imagination to think of reasons!

The main reason I haven't contributed is: why would I?

More specifically: OK, so you want me to contribute my writing, editing and brainstorming to your novel? OK, so how much are you will to pay me? You're not paying me? OK then, so what am I supposed to get out of this?

Most people who are not interested in writing will not be interested in writing for you for free. Most people who ARE interested in writing will prefer to write their own things, for themselves, or don't have enough time (energy/imagination/etc) to write their own things that they want to write so are even less likely to want to write for you.

You can understand why we're not all so generous, right? Sure, by all means, advertise - the internet is a big place and you may find someone who will like your idea. But surely you can understand why "hey, leave your own stuff and come and do lots of work for me for free!" is going to be, at the very least, a hard sell?

Now, if you want more detail: I'll admit, hard sells aren't unsellable. There might be circumstances when an offer like this would tempt me. Indeed, I've participated in some vaguely similar things myself in the past, though not quite the same. If Robin Hobb, Christopher Priest and the ghosts of Terry Pratchett and JRR Tolkien got together and asked me to do some collaborative fiction with them, you can bet I'd say yes. But these circumstances do not appear to apply with your project, so I have no interest in it.

Obviously, the most general circumstance lacking is just that I don't have enough time/energy/etc right now. But other than that, there are a range of specific reasons why I might collaborate, and specific reasons why those reasons don't seem to apply in this case. I believe many, though perhaps not all, of these issues will also be relevant to the non-participation of others. However, if you don't want to hear any criticism of your project, you can gloss over this section...

Spoiler:

- friendship. If a bunch of my friends were doing this, I might join. Doing things with friends is fun. I've done online roleplaying that was very prose-y, pseudo-novel-y in form, and I've done collaborative conworlding, and in both cases at least a considerable amount of my motivation was getting to collaborate with friends, or friends of friends. The people doing your thing are not my friends. I don't know them. I doubt that I would want to know them. I've never heard of '4th kingdom', but looking at it it seems pretty like a cesspool. Our lord and saviour Trump, evil "feminsits" with their evil "gender equality" ideas, decline of male gender roles why won't people let boys play with lego anymore, "an ear for men .com"... these obviously aren't people I want to spend any more time with than necessary. Why would I invest my time in building relationships with odious creeps and neonazis?

- creative control. If it's me and someone I know starting from scratch, I might feel I could exert enough creative influence to make the resulting product meet my interests and tastes. But in this case, it would be me, a whole bunch of people i don't know, and 15 years of existing canon. So basically I'd be signing on to work on someone else's novel. That's less appealing. And if I did get involved - you've written 14 chapters in 15 years, so if I did start to care i'd just be frustrated.

- concepts that really interest me, and particularly concepts that were rare and special. If a project is exciting enough, it might entice me in with the chance to work with cool ideas. But so far as I can see, that doesn't apply here. The setting offers nothing we haven't seen a million times from teenagers across the 'net, and the plot is beyond 'cliché' and into 'plagiarism'. There's nothing interesting here.

- quality. The chance to work on something good is of course appealing. But this... no offense, but this isn't good, is it?

Spoiler:

:- the plot is... well, 50 years ago, when this was a film and a novel and a comic book and an animated series, it was already being called "hackwork", "camp", and "inane drivel". The half dozen books and half dozen films since then have not improved matters. Even leaving aside the full-scale parody film version, it's a good hint that when your idea is SO laughably cliché (and stupid!) and universally recognised that Rugrats felt able to do an episody parodying your story, that's not a sign that the story needs yet another version. Personally, I think the consensus is that Asimov already did as well as could be done with such a terrible idea, and I don't think you're a better writer than Asimov.

: - and on the smaller scale, the events read like... I don't know, LARPing? There's no sense of what makes an effective, compelling plot. It's all... just wish-fulfilment. "Everyone gathers to persuade Steve to adopt a religion... they congratulate themselves on a job well done". There are clearly no human beings in this story, just cartoons from a homeschooled teenager's daydreams.

:- come on people. miniaturisation of people? "life-suction"? Are you writing SF, or are you writing daydreamed anime? You completely abandon any pretense of this being anything other than laughable camp through your technological premises, yet the style is dull, not camp. Likewise the political background - I don't know if this is actually a fantasy written by twelve-year-olds, or an ironic polemic by neonazis, but both those genre are just plain ridiculous. So to make anything readable out of it you need to embrace that silliness.

:- the writing itself is awful. Really, really awful. Even just look at that excerpt you quote above - you can see that that's bad writing, right? It reads like it was written by a teenage boy who hasn't read very many novels before. Now sure, my own writing may not always be great. But if I'm going to write something bad, I'd rather it be bad in my own, hopefully interesting way, rather than bad and unimaginative.

: - there doesn't seem to be any sense of narrative drive, of structure and pacing, of theme, of coherence of tone. It seems like it was written by a committee - a committee of people who'd never written a novel, and probably hadn't read many either. I know that it was - but "written by committee" is not normally a compliment.

- also: sheesh. I know that everyone has their own cross to bear, and some people do have very serious mental illnesses. But that doesn't inherently make them attractive to work with. I don't feel that the idea of trying to write creatively, while at the same time being forbidden from including the words "bike", "mess", "drip" or "wary" or a dozen other words some of which I can't even decode because they're censored, without having to include some sort of trigger warning, is a particularly enticing thought. If you, or whoever it is, can't read the word "bike" without having a horribly psychoneurological episode, that's very sad, but you can see why it also makes you/them a pain in the arse to work with in the field of novel-writing?

So what's the lure? What IS the reason I should devote time and energy to your project?

Anyway, i'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm trying to be fair and honest here. I wouldn't have said anything, but you did specifically ask, so... there's some thoughts.

I think the takeaway from this is: if people don't respond, they probably don't have anything nice to say...

I remember reading this thread when it first came up. I don't like collaborative projects in general, and a collaborative book is really out there for me. I never got as far as going to the actual link, but if what others are saying is true, this is really not a group of people I'd like to associate with.

Big Pharma + Gov't are in some kind of collusion, with the Gov't having blanket emancipated pre-18 yr olds, in order that Pharma be allowed to experiment on them using cutting edge (and potentially hazardous) new techonologies/treatements w/o parental consent (?)

This reminds me, somehow, like Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. And mebbe A Brave New World, and some other books.

Thanks for the invite, yet I am way too bogged down with work, helping son start to look more seriously at summer CGI/Webdesign Camps, College, and folk of the opposite persuasion, I find that I am lucky I can find time to bang out a translation of a song or poem or whatnot in one of my own , and make the odd response on the Convo Thread in one of yall's s.

Maybe let some of the lyrics inform your writing. For the longest time, I have often wondered whether Bowie's persona in the first part of the song was talking about a heterosexual relationship with an older woman, speaking as Julia to Smith (Cf. 1984) , or speaking as a young 'Diamond Dog' youth to his older lover. Just who was that 'Sweet Thing' , that 'portrait in flesh that trails by a leash' ??? Not that such a relationship has anything to do with your particular tale. Still…

Just a delicious, sinful, dystopian, desperate confusion of it all, clawing over itself to climb out of the drowning sewer of moldy grey seedy concrete reality. Bowie certainly did spoil us in his Glass Asylum with just a hint of Mayhem… heia, pues.

BTW, 'Inner Bruise' sounds a lot like an American Urban novel title. Sweet Things… how about that for a title?
At once gives the image of tenage innocence, and how Gov't + Pharma now eats them up like so many bonbons…
…if…that was what you were going for, of course.

I think the takeaway from this is: if people don't respond, they probably don't have anything nice to say...

I remember reading this thread when it first came up. I don't like collaborative projects in general, and a collaborative book is really out there for me. I never got as far as going to the actual link, but if what others are saying is true, this is really not a group of people I'd like to associate with.

I'm with gestaltist.

I have very little interest in joining collaborative projects with people I don't know, and only on very rare occasions have joined collaborative projects with people I know! That's not really how I work. I'm a pretty independent and private conworlder and writer. Furthermore, the premise (and the writing) didn't interest me all that much. I'm not a big fan of downer "twenty minutes into the future" stories. So, I never looked into it beyond the original post here.

As I believe I've said before, this sounds like an interesting premise, and I wish you and your fellow collaborators the best of luck writing this story. I'm personally just not interested in joining the project. It's just not for me.

Generally speaking, I don't like to collaborate on creative endeavors. There will be exceptions to this, of course. I participate in a lot of collablang threads, but all I have to do in those is vote, most of the time. I'm very interested in potentially playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which have been described as "collaborative storytelling", but those stories don't get published. I'd be open to collaborating on a deeper level, for lack of a better term, similar to how this story is being written, but only with one or two people I was already close with beforehand. I'm not comfortable collaborating with a group of strangers on this level.

Just an aspect of your personality, in other words.

As a bit of a continuation of the last point, this project was started in 2003, about 12-13 years before this thread was started, and 14-15 years before now (if my math is correct). That's super intimidating. I know the Wiki says something about "being welcoming to newcomers", but that doesn't change the fact that, if I were to join this project, there would be more than a decade's worth of material already there, that I never got a say in. Additionally, you've made it sound like the project doesn't get a lot of new members, meaning that most of the people currently working on it have been doing so for a while, and joining such an established community 14-15 years in is, again, super intimidating to me.

This is a real problem -- for other would-be newcomers, I imagine, as well as yourself. Unfortunately, I can't think of any way around this.

I'm a writer myself. I'm also a conlanger. I have a bunch of projects of my own that I barely have time to work on. Joining collaborative projects like this would just give me even less time to work on my own original stuff. Like I said, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but I have a feeling I'm not alone on this point, at least.

Given that many people here say they have so little time to conworld/conlang, saying "Life gets in the way", I totally believe this. I mean, just look at the current conlang relay thread!

It's just not my style. I'll reiterate that the premise sounds cool, and that I don't mean to offend or discourage your or any of the other participants, but, based on the excerpts and summaries I've seen here and on the Wiki, my writing style wouldn't fit in with this project. I realize I'm almost literally judging a book by its cover, and I know this isn't a very concrete statement, but it just doesn't seem like the kind of story I'd write.

I have a friend on 4thkingdom whom we've asked before to join Inner Bruise. She says her writing style doesn't fit the story, so you're not the only one. (This particular friend, in case you're wondering, has a jumps-around writing style that differs from the straightforward style of Inner Bruise.)

Possibly connected to the last point, something specific that I was actually put off by was the political background for the story. The coup against Trump and the things that follow just sound so unrealistic. I understand that this is science fiction, and some things are going to be "unrealistic", but this is just… silly, for lack of a better term. On top of that, it feels like it vilifies anyone who doesn't support Trump. On top of everything about Zuniga and the Revolution Party being unbelievable worldbuilding that would take me out of the story immediately, the subtext doesn't sit well with me at all. I'm not saying the story shouldn't criticize liberalism and left-wing ideologies if members of the project feel some of those viewpoints need to be criticized, but this feels far too biased towards the right to me, whether that was intentional or not. Was this part there since 2003 (not the Trump part specifically, of course, but the whole "damn liberal children ruining democracy, legalizing drugs, etc., etc." part)? Obviously the story isn't portraying the Republican, LeGrand, as perfect either, but the parts of the background about him sound far more realistic. For example, "we oppose communism and same-sex couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt" are real, mainstream conservative viewpoints in the United States right now, while "let's kill thousands of cops" is a ridiculous caricature of liberalism that almost couldn't be further from the reality of what even the most extreme people believe. Also, the fact that this liberal president essentially makes a law based on "waaah, our parents are too mean", again, just feels so silly and rather biased.

Wow, I didn't expect people to misinterpret the writers' politics like this.

Most of the people on 4thkingdom, including most of the Inner Bruise writers, hate Trump. A lot of us live out our fantasies in Inner Bruise, and the anti-Trump coup and Revolution Party are just that. (Note that one writer says, "I'd vote for the Revolution Party in a heartbeat.")

For a clarification, 4thkingdom allows people to share links outside the site. Most of the anti-SJW-type links, like "Teacher won't let boys play with Legos!", on the "gate" page lately have been contributed by the same 4K poster. This guy is a right-winger who once wrote a 3,495-word thread OP titled "Is discrimination o.k.?" This guy is a black sheep on 4thkingdom.

As for whether an anti-Trump coup is unrealistic, many people at the website http://generational-theory.com/forum/index.php have been predicting an overthrow of the American government by the American people for years -- ever since Bush-43 was president. There are high dreams of revolution there.

There is some great research now, if anyone is interested in pursuing this, and it was highlighted recently in the New York Times and the Post. There is a scholar by the name of Yascha Mounk of Harvard, who with a partner has done some interesting work on world value surveys showing that young generations today are much less enthusiastic about democracy. If you ask the question, “Can you imagine an authoritarian government taking over if democracy simply doesn’t work?” Millennials today around the world are much more likely to say yes. Older generations, many of whom recall, or were raised in the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War and the war against fascism, adamantly say, “No, democracy is always the best solution.”

And, as per the Vosem Chart, the Revvies would probably be anarcho-syndicalist, not liberal.

Another specific aspect of the story that I was put off by was all the romance. This is just a personal issue I have with a lot of fiction, especially fiction centered around teenagers. The whole "X is dating Y, but X and Z used to be together" feels like very forced drama and is usually unnecessary to the general plot. I get that it's background information about the characters and their relationships, but there's something about it that's just very off-putting to me. Again, this is a problem I have with a lot of stories, not just this project.

I remember some guy on Quora answering a question as to what some things were that he didn't like that other people did. Among the things he listed were fiction that were just people talking without a plot . . . and romance novels. You're not alone! (Some Inner Bruise writers like to write romance. It doesn't bother me even though I've never had a boyfriend or girlfriend.)

If I might ask, what kind of response did you expect? I don't think anyone's trying to say "this project is bad and everyone involved has been wasting their time" by not jumping onboard. I think it's really admirable that this community has stuck with this project for so long, and again, I wish you the best of luck. I'm just personally not interested in joining.

I never would have guessed that some people might be put off by the romance. I was expecting issues with the politics, perhaps, maybe people complaining about whether it conforms to the dicta about "good writing" ("Show, don't tell, don't use infodumps, don't use said-bookisms, etc. . . .") Maybe people disliking the concept of liberated teen-agers (and i seems I was right on this one). Maybe some people saying they don't like science fiction, and would rather collaborate on fantasy. I didn't even consider most of the things you listed.

EDIT: You asked "Was this part there since 2003 (not the Trump part specifically, . . .)?" To answer your question, Inner Bruise has been worked and reworked over the years, many times. The 2003 false start did include a long infodump that mentioned "Generation Y" flooding the White House, but we had the Republican LeGrand running against a Democrat for several years, albeit with a mention of "President Zuniga" going on for a long time. The anti-Trump coup became newly prominent in our backstory in 2016, when it was clear Trump would be running against either Bernie or Hillary.

* I'll echo shimo on one point at least: Right now I've got six or eight writing projects that I've been very successfully procrastinating the last few years. I'd have very little time or effort to procrastinate on another!

Wow, this seems to be a common reason! Not really surprising, though. I need to do more work on the Lehola Galaxy's planet Bodus myself.

* Also, teen-fantasy SF really isn't my thing. The whole society revolves around "liberated" teens, free from the control of their monstrous & evil parents thing, yeah, that's pretty silly and unrealistic. Admittedly, I would have eaten that up when I was 16! For about twenty minutes, because, well, it doesn't really take a genius to figure out what control-free 16 year old children will do with themselves.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think 16-year-olds would do without parental/governmental control? Scotland lowered its age of majority and age of emancipation to 16 in 1991, and it hasn't turned into Lord of the Flies over there.

* If the story were focused on innerbody travel as cutting edge healing science, even with some kind of vague & sinister politics going on in the background to cause tension, then I'd be more likely to read. (And if it were my area of interest, more likely to participate.) The focus vis-a-vis the premise seems to be lacking, though.

Many of us would like to get to the inner-body tavel part faster! Right now we're at the point in the story where the team of somatonauts (inner-body travel doctors) is introduced, and we're trying to create somatonaut characters.

Taking away the drawbacks, I think the actual premise - - - innerbody travel - - - is a pretty cool area to write about. I wrote a speculative fiction story about innerbody travel several years ago, though in the mind-psychological realm rather than the physical. All the same, good luck with it!

BTW, 'Inner Bruise' sounds a lot like an American Urban novel title. Sweet Things… how about that for a title?
At once gives the image of tenage innocence, and how Gov't + Pharma now eats them up like so many bonbons…
…if…that was what you were going for, of course.

American Urban? Is that like Elmore Leonard's Freaky Deaky?

As for Sweet Things . . . the teens in this story aren't exactly innocent . . . many of them use drugs, after all.

Interestingly, the last generation of innocent teens was the Silent Generation . . .

and someone turning 16 in 2028 would be born in 2012 . . . which is part of what Howe & Strauss, in The Fourth Turning, call the New Silent Generation!

* Also, teen-fantasy SF really isn't my thing. The whole society revolves around "liberated" teens, free from the control of their monstrous & evil parents thing, yeah, that's pretty silly and unrealistic. Admittedly, I would have eaten that up when I was 16! For about twenty minutes, because, well, it doesn't really take a genius to figure out what control-free 16 year old children will do with themselves.

Just out of curiosity, what do you think 16-year-olds would do without parental/governmental control? Scotland lowered its age of majority and age of emancipation to 16 in 1991, and it hasn't turned into Lord of the Flies over there.

The details may differ due to time lag, but the long and short of it is getting into directionless trouble. When I was 16, this largely meant getting high, getting plastered, getting laid, doing nothing and playing video games.

Ah, the devilsome evils of Suburbia! Gangs and violence were ills of the inner cities. Generally speaking, society was still pretty much right-side up, though, and those things, when endabbled in moderation, could, as they had been for thousands of years, be blown off as a teenage phase, eventually to be grown out of. And often blown off with a wistful smile and the recollection of one's own identical or at least parallel behaviour of years before.

Anymore, society as a whole is getting off track. While the indiscretions of youth haven't changed a lot, the society that had once formed a corrective boundary is not only no longer interested in such correction, but has gone straight through and has become more interested in joining in with the bad behaviour. Those devilsome evils that were once relatively harmless become embedded within society. I see the backdrop of Inner Bruise as more a dystopic continuation of a nascently dystopic present. I don't mind a good dystopy from time to time; this one struck me the wrong way, though.

I hope the change works out for Scotland! Me I think it would be a disastrous change in the US.

If we stuff the whole chicken back into the egg, will all our problems go away? --- Wandalf of Angera

As a bit of a continuation of the last point, this project was started in 2003, about 12-13 years before this thread was started, and 14-15 years before now (if my math is correct). That's super intimidating. I know the Wiki says something about "being welcoming to newcomers", but that doesn't change the fact that, if I were to join this project, there would be more than a decade's worth of material already there, that I never got a say in. Additionally, you've made it sound like the project doesn't get a lot of new members, meaning that most of the people currently working on it have been doing so for a while, and joining such an established community 14-15 years in is, again, super intimidating to me.

This is a real problem -- for other would-be newcomers, I imagine, as well as yourself. Unfortunately, I can't think of any way around this.

No joke there! There really is no way for you in the project to get around it. I've participated in one long-term shared worldbuilding project (it's at the 20 year mark, now) and can say this is just the nature of the beast. Interested folks will naturally be somewhat intimidated by the prospect of trying to enter a project & work with people that already have a long history. No matter how nice or accommodating or welcoming project members are, this will always be a factor.

There is also a very steep learning curve involved. I don't know how much data has been generated for Inner Bruise, but I do know that the project I worked on became extremely voluminous. The wiki stands at 3600+ articles, and I no longer have any idea how many stand-alone websites are still active. That's a lot of material for a newcomer to absorb!

All I can say is that I hope anyone who is interested in such a project, but is feeling intimidated by the scope of it, will summon up the courage to at least give it a try! People in these kinds of projects do come and go, and at least in my experience no one will berate you for joining and lurking or offering only a very little.

If we stuff the whole chicken back into the egg, will all our problems go away? --- Wandalf of Angera

The details may differ due to time lag, but the long and short of it is getting into directionless trouble. When I was 16, this largely meant getting high, getting plastered, getting laid, doing nothing and playing video games.

Ah, the devilsome evils of Suburbia! Gangs and violence were ills of the inner cities. Generally speaking, society was still pretty much right-side up, though, and those things, when endabbled in moderation, could, as they had been for thousands of years, be blown off as a teenage phase, eventually to be grown out of. And often blown off with a wistful smile and the recollection of one's own identical or at least parallel behaviour of years before.

Anymore, society as a whole is getting off track. While the indiscretions of youth haven't changed a lot, the society that had once formed a corrective boundary is not only no longer interested in such correction, but has gone straight through and has become more interested in joining in with the bad behaviour. Those devilsome evils that were once relatively harmless become embedded within society. I see the backdrop of Inner Bruise as more a dystopic continuation of a nascently dystopic present. I don't mind a good dystopy from time to time; this one struck me the wrong way, though.

I hope the change works out for Scotland! Me I think it would be a disastrous change in the US.

Ah, so you're saying that society has festered. I still regularly encounter adults like Mrs. Dahlgren from The Bittersweet Generation, as there were many of during my teen-age years in the nineties. I just can't see Western society as morally debaucherous.

Elemtilas, are you an INFP, by any chance? Your rhetoric about the war between good and evil and the need to be vigilant against evil (as I understand it), and your rich fantasy world, would certainly suggest it. If you are, cool. I'm an ENFP.

Ah, so you're saying that society has festered. I still regularly encounter adults like Mrs. Dahlgren from The Bittersweet Generation, as there were many of during my teen-age years in the nineties. I just can't see Western society as morally debaucherous.

Well, no, not entirely debaucherous! I get the whole social mores moving wigglewormwise thing, but, I just think the whole worm has wiggled a bit too far.

Elemtilas, are you an INFP, by any chance? Your rhetoric about the war between good and evil and the need to be vigilant against evil (as I understand it), and your rich fantasy world, would certainly suggest it. If you are, cool. I'm an ENFP.

That obvious? Right! INFP-A. Looks like both of us are good company!

If we stuff the whole chicken back into the egg, will all our problems go away? --- Wandalf of Angera

BTW, 'Inner Bruise' sounds a lot like an American Urban novel title. Sweet Things… how about that for a title?
At once gives the image of tenage innocence, and how Gov't + Pharma now eats them up like so many bonbons…
…if…that was what you were going for, of course.